Event

C++Con 2014 - Trip Report

Last month I attending C++Con in at the Meyenbauer Center in Bellevue, Washington. It was the first year, but you never would have known. There were 600+ attendees and a strong set of presenters. The presentations came from standards committee members, NASA employees, and even Bjarne himself.

Jon Kalb was the organizer and he used a similar format to his other conference, C++Now (formerly BoostCon). The days are long and packed with a huge variety of talks. Topics covered ranged from using Boost to bridge the C++98/11 gap and large scale refactoring to vision systems on Mars rovers and what is coming in the C++17 standard. Most daytime talks were slideshow-style. Most evening talks were panel discussions. Each morning had lightning talks by people who just signed up and presented on any topic.

From F5 there were about 8 people attending. Neeraj Poddar and I were the only ones from the LineRate team. Rachel Cheng and Michael VanLoon presented on using Boost to bridge the gap between C++98 and C++11. I gave a lightning talk on Test-driven Performance.

Summary

Humor was definitely on this packed agenda. It wasn't all super-dry type deduction talks. There were arguments, jokes, and a poll about Scott Meyer's hair. This is a conference for C++ programmers, not beginners. It has talks which do span the range of capabilities, but attendees are required to have knowledge of C++ as a base. Having an understanding of language design certainly helps attendees get the most out of it.